Primary producers are the organisms in an ecosystem that produce biomass from inorganic compounds (autotrophs). In almost all cases these are photosynthetically active organisms (plants, cyanobacteria and a number of other unicellular organisms; see article on photosynthesis). However, there are examples of archea (unicellular organisms) that produce biomass from the oxidation of inorganic chemical compounds (chemoautotrophs) in hydrothermal vents in the deep ocean.
Fungi and other organisms who gain their biomass from oxidizing organic materials are called decomposers and are not primary producers.
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Famous quotes containing the words primary and/or producers:
“If the accumulated wealth of the past generations is thus tainted,—no matter how much of it is offered to us,—we must begin to consider if it were not the nobler part to renounce it, and to put ourselves in primary relations with the soil and nature, and abstaining from whatever is dishonest and unclean, to take each of us bravely his part, with his own hands, in the manual labor of the world.”
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)
“When producers want to know what the public wants, they graph it as curves. When they want to tell the public what to get, they say it in curves.”
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